BLOG Moved

Hi, since we wanted to add some features to our blog (like tags and categories) we moved to wordpress 2.5. A really good blogging engine that discovered as very customizable during one my last webdesign projects.
Our new blog is now hosted directly on the bernawebdesign.ch server at www.bernawebdesign.ch/blog, www.bernawebdesign.ch/trips will take you there as well!

Hope to hear from you soon!

cheers Marco and Sarah

Life in Playa

Well, at the moment we are enjoying the sun of Playa del Carmen, kind of a second home in Mexico for me.
Also, we are working a big webdesign project wich is taking up a lot of time, but it's very interesting!
Also, I'm (Marco) trying to organize a technical cave diving course... we'll see what happens.

C u Marco

Snow to Beach

:) Like yin and yang, winter and summer, snow and sand come and go...
And yes, after a loooong snooooowy winter, we are in mexico again!

it's awesome to feel nice and warm again!

cheers Marco

Our only spring day of the year in Denver

Yep, today was the one and only spring day in our 2008... and we spent it in the beautiful city center of Denver!

At 489 Inches we close

Oh well, what to say... It was a S-N-O-W-Y winter!!!
Today, closing day for steamboat, we got up ready for a sunny spring day... but no, it was snowing again... 489 inches of wonderful snow fell on "The Boat" this winter! great!

now, we're at home, we just had dinner and are ready to go celebrate this awesome winter. though, looking out and watching all this snow still falling makes me a bit sad, it's a shame that business decisions rule everything...

well... in 7 days we'll be in playa and next winter might be even better ;-)

Cheers Marco

450' of Snow in Steamboat

STEAMBOAT POSTS RECORD BREAKING CHAMPAGNE POWDER® SNOW SEASON

With more than 37 feet (11.5 m) of Champagne Powder® snow this winter, the Steamboat Ski Resort will finish the 2007/2008 season in record fashion, breaking its previous season snow record of 447.75 inches set in 1996/1997.

And We ARE Here!!!

c u soon with the upcoming trip to mexico and South America!!!

Beach to Snow

The BIG day... We move to winter!!!
With all our diving gear we take the direct flight to Denver, Colorado where some, hopefully, good snow will be waiting for us.

179 min in Nohoch Nah Chich

Well, what to say, the 5th of December in Playa is becoming a traditional day for wonderful long cave dives: last year was 132 minutes in Sac Aktun going to cenote Bosh, this year 179min in Nohoch Nah Chic. Same as last year it was hard to organize the dive but it was mooooore than worthed! the dive plan Nico came up with involved 1 80cuft stage, 4 jumps and a couple of T-junction. we dove it smoothly and enjoyed a lot! thanks Nico

Diving Tajma Ha and Chikin Ha

Finally-we-made it do go diving a Cenote with el Dengue, an old friend from my IDC, I decide to take them to Tajma Ha and Chikin Ha, two cenotes that are not so famous among cavern divers but are definetly worthed the visit!!! we had 2 really good dives! and lot of fun!

Beach Day

Today there is finally wind in playa... So we hope Sarah might get to kitesurf a bit... "unfortunately", wind means also that Mickey has to work with his kite students... so we just hang out on the beach and enjoy the sun... anyway we'll be back!!!

Diving Gran Cenote and Dos Ojos

Being a diver in Yucatan and not going to the Cenotes would be almost a capital sin ;-) so I took Sarah for some dives... first we drove to Tulum to go to Gran Cenote. After a great dive, we jumped in the car and after a quick check of Cenote Calavera we drove to Dos Ojos, one of the most beautiful and visited cenotes. Although it was getting dark, Sarah loved it! and I was suuuuper happy!

Cheers Marco

Merida - Playa

So So, we're getting close to our last stop of our awesome trip... Playa del Carmen. After a slow morning in merida we try to take a bus that does not exist and after some running around we are moving... the 4 hour trip is confortable (yes, mexican busses are definitly another class) and i've plenty of time to think about what I want to show to / do with Sarah in Playa (for the ones that do not know, I lived in playa 5 months last summer). Well it turns out that there is a lot that I want to show her, foremost Bars, Restaurants and Cenotes.
As we get to playa we go to hotel moms get a room and go to la famiglia for a REAL PIZZZZA!!! mmmmmm yummmy, this Italian immigrants are tooo cool! After the superb meal, we go to la ranita where, guess what, I meet some old friends, too cool, exactly as if I left yesterday!
cheers Marco

Uxmal and Merida

Caye Caulker - San Pedro - Corozal - Chetumal - Merida

LOOOOONG trip today... we first wanted to go to Belize city and then bus to Merida, but sitting at the dock after 2 days of rain and being only 30 min from "La isla bonita" (san pedro ... remember the Madonna song?) made us change our plan... we went to san pedro spent couple of hours swimming and on the beach then 2 h boat ride to Corozal then bus to the border, walk over the omnipresent bridge, bus to Chetumal, horrible super expensive pastas and finally night bus to Mérida... well we actually wanted to get off earlier but the bus was to confortable and we missed our stop...

Rain and chill in Caye Caulker

oh, well... Caribbean doesn't always mean sun... but being in Caye Caulker in a rainy day is a really relaxing thing... you basically don't do anything!

Diving the Blue Hole

We had signed up to dive the magical and famous Blue Hole (don't worry, if you are not a diver, you won't know it!). It was a 2 hour boat ride to get there, so I took my motion sickness pills. I was little anxious of the pills effect plus the deep dive and I felt myself pretty high but I guess this the good attitude if you have 10 sharks surrounding you. I found them really beautiful in this dark blue water ( yeah it is dark at 42m deep!). There were Bull and black tip sharks. Not bad. We then stopped on a protected island for the lunch break. The weather was horrible and it was pretty cold. We saw lots of birds called bubbies, with red throat that work like a chewing gum bubble when they want to flirt with femals... The next 2 dives were really nice. Wonderful colors, lots of fishes and sponges. The ride home was long and agitated, but it was worth it.

Flores - Caye Caulker

Let's go to Belize! the day is a transit day to the Caye Caulker island. But I just wanted to add that for the first time being French and carrying a French pass is not sooo bad! Marco had to pay 25 $ to enter Belize! hihihi! And it was free for me..

Tikal

The advertising was: " Experience Tikal by sunrise" ..mhh.. appealing! We thought less people, good light to take picture, Let's sign up! The mini bus picked us up at 3.45 a.m. As usual, I was really lucky to get in the bus at last. No more seat for me, so I had to sit somewhere between the sits and the door. Bouhhh! I wanted to finish my kind of night during the 1 hour drive! When we got there we had to walk for 15 min and climb on top of a pyramid located on one side of the site, just in front of the sunrise. 5 a.m, we can not see a thing. 5.30 a.m it is event worst. the fog is so thick, we have to concentrate to see something (not to say that an hysteric u.s girl told me to shut up because it was something you could do only once in your life, so just meditate!).. at that point you are so happy to have woken up so early.
We then did the guided tour, which was pretty short and not really interesting. We discovered later one that our guide did it on purpose. He had another guided tour 1 hour later:-( Anyway, we have the "Bible " with us, so we did the tour again. The weather went better and better, so we could take nice pictures with blue sky!

Rio Dulce - Flores

Finca el Paraiso

Livingston

Antigua - Rio Dulce

oh yeah!!! bus day, boring day! On the other side, the lodge we found was a good choice! It is in the mangrove and we have our own bungalow!!! The owner are swiss so they have Rösti on the menu...

The appointement

Antigua

For the ones who do not know Szonszo (Mattia Sansossio) well, he his one of my best friends BUT receiving an email from him is rarely related with pleasure... even less pleasure is derived by a mail labeled URGENTISSIMO (very very urgent). Lets give some background information: he is the guy that “runs” the youth section of the mountaineering club of Bellinzona and I'm the one programming their website. Logical conclusion: his emails = web troubles. And today they were big, Really BIG! Due to a bug in a software that we had on the website, we had been victim of a spammers attack that blocked the website. And of curse I had to fix it quickly... costed me almost the all day and night... and I was supposed to go to bed early to be fit for the interview...

Copan - Antigua and a fondue

Seams like we are getting really lucky with the places we stays and eat lately. After a long trip we got back to Antigua and, not knowing where to go eat (remember, Antigua is a restaurants paradise) we decide to check out Panza Verde, astonishing place with a swiss (Lausannois) chef. Before going in we do the standard check: will eating here kill our daily budget!? Yes it will, BUT they have Fondue!!!

Semuc Champey

“The place where the river goes under the earth”, that is what Semuc Champey means, pretty appropriate but IMHO the name should be “The beautiful place where the river goes under the earth”. It is a phenomenal karst bridge, the river eroded its way under the rocks forming a cave and on top of the cave (the bridge) there are plenty of turquoise 25°C pools. Really Really cool! Back in Copan we go to the pretty hotel again and have another amazing meat dinner!

Lanquin caves

Short bumpy ride to Lanquin and again no doubles at el retiro, a really nice place along the rio Lanquin. We decide to visit the nearby caves around 5 pm so that we'll be there when thousands of bats will flight out for some food. Really impressing, it's crazy how many of them live in there, ok, the cave is supposed to be 72 Km long... not bad huh!? The dinner is a culinary desaster: pizza with fries... and they are proud of it... no comment.

xela nebaj coban

we actually wanted to go to Nebaj and stay there but seen the weather we decided to keep on going and to go to Coban. 9 hours after leaving Xela we get to one of the prettiest house we have been. Unfortunately the have no double rooms and we take a dorm. The dinner is delicious, we go for grilled meat with a bottle of wine... mmm sooo good and on top of it we are in a colonial patio lit only by candles...

Xela again and finally and Embassy appointment

So, finally in our inbox there could be a date for the embassy appointment... and there it is: all November is full then sometime in December... S*ç%)(+!T no good. Luckly around 10am THE GOOD NEWS is there: Dear applicants, you'll be interviewed on the 19th Nov. 2007 at 13.00!!! YESSSSSS FINALLY!!! now, of course we think that we are all done but it is not so, we'll spend the whole day going to the bank, filling e-forms (of course being a male between 16 and 46 doesn't help --> one more form where they ask me among other things where I've been the last 10 years... as if i knew!) and sending everything again. For dinner we want to celebrate the appointment with a raclette at the local Swiss restaurant... closed on Monday and Tuesday, guess what day is the 13th!? You say Monday!? No, is Tuesday... whatever.

Fuentes Georgina

After some hot dipping we leave this beautiful place towards Xela for what is going to be maybe a travel day. As we get to Xela we have to go and check if we got all the infos from Steamboat in order to fix an appointement with the embassy... it almost happened... but only almost. 2 Hours later we finally had everything and we sent it in, but it is too late now to move further and we decide to pass another day in Xela.

Sunrise on the Tajamulco (4220m)

YESSSS! That was 4 am when we left the camp! We had to climb only less than one our to go to the top. We were finally feeling kind of warm again.(even if we had to stop every 10 min to wait for the turtles.. It was only 5 am when we both broke our record (4220m) and unfortunately the sun was coming only 30 min later! We wrapped ourselves in a sleeping bag and hided behind a small rock avoiding the wind.

Tajamulco base camp (4005m)

Here is the plan. Today we have to climb till the camp at 4000m where we gonna spend the night. And tomorrow at 3.40 am we will do the rest to the top to see the sunrise.
First of all we had to take tree buses to arrive at the starting point. The ascent was not to difficult. Even if we lost 2 American guys from L.A on the way (Too much air probably.. ;-) )and that we had to break every 20 min.. then came the setting of the camp (OK, still active) and the night. Beautiful by the way, as always in mountain when it is not cloudy, you can see multitude of stars. But in the other side, it means as well that it is going to be cold! And cold, it was. Very. Just imagine that we carry only summer staff with us. I had a t-shirt, two pullover, a king of polar jacket that a just bought for 4 us$ the day before, and a wind jacket. I was still cold. I pass that memorable/unforgettable night in the sleeping bag (comfort zone 6 °c but it was freezing..) without a minute of sleep just waiting 4am to wake up and finally move.

Quetzaltenango (Xela)

Nothing special, we just chilled and signed up to climb the Tamajulco volcano, 4220m, highest point in Central America the next two days.

Santa Cruz - San Pedro la laguna

We did our third move on the other side of the lake to San Pedro la laguna. It is a bad choice. Should be bohemian but it is just disappointing. The good new was that we got a positive answer from Guatemala city embassy. We can finally be interviewed there to get our visa for Steamboat!! HIHAAA!

Diving a caldera (volcano lake)

Well...it was....refreshing! We had a 7mm full body wet suit plus another 7 mm shorties! After 45 min, your are happy to feel the sun again! Marco's point of view gonna be probably different but there weren't much to see. A few crabs and fishes. The highlight was probably at the end of the dive when at some point we could dig with our hand for a warm earth. Delightening

pana - santa cruz

We heard of some possibilities of diving in the lake, so we headed up toward on hostal-diving-school called “La Iguana Perdida”. The location is wonderful and there is a nice backpackers community. We signed up for the next morning dive. It is going to be my first dive in a lake...will see...

chichicastenango's market - panajachel

As you can see on the pictures, the biggest market of Guatemlala: Chichicastenango is amazingly colorful. Here, You can find everything made of the famous rainbow color material. And it is not only for the tourist. 95% of the women are still wearing traditional costumes. And this is really nice. We personally bought 10 hats..yeahh.. you know..we gonna start a new business this winter... ;-)
After that we went to Panajachel, on the Atitlan lake. Soo beautiful! We felt at home. The only difference is the shape of the mountain that are actually volcanoes!
Have a look.

Antigua

chill out today, we just stroll around Antigua and go to the weekly market... buy of the day 5 DVD's --> the whole first season of Rome for 10 UD$.